THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SCHOOL 21$

methods are based on this assumption. Indeed, it is so
generally accepted by us all that teachers are responsible
for such work that here it only remains to suggest certain
corollaries to the assumption that are not always considered
either by parents or teachers.

It is important that every child should learn to read,
write and be able to manage his own money matters, but
it is not important that all of them should reach the same
standard or reach it at the same time. This thesis has
been maintained throughout this book and it only remains
to be said that a teacher who really respects knowledge
will find ample and compelling evidence in modern psy-
chology to justify her waiting until her pupils show desire
and willingness to learn.

Parents seem to resent the slowness with which many
children acquire the arts, especially reading, spelling and
those branches of arithmetic on which the average adult
considers himself an authority. They rightly urge that
children are not fairly treated unless they are brought up
to the standard of the qualifying examination that they
must pass in order to get further education. But the
necessity is no justification for forcing formal learning on
a child.

In the first place, the teachers in elementary schools
can almost with certainty say who will get entrance scholar-
ships to secondary schools, and to force the rest of a large
lower school to learn at the rate of the minority is pre-
posterous. In the few cases where children get a scholar-
ship because of the teacher's skill in persuading the
examiners to overestimate his pupil's ability, the after-
results are bitterly disappointing. The child's personality
has been forced into a false mould ; he seldom makes good
in his new school and often takes up life-work for
which he is ill-suited. As great an expert on examinations
as B. C. Wallis writes protesting against all forms of pressure
and pointing out that the pace is set by teachers. ' Mis-